April, 2009

I can almost hear Another One Bites The Dust , the ubiquitous Queen song played at so many American high school sporting events. According to Professor Barry Brook's Brave New Climate , James Hansen and Tom Blees have influenced another long time anti-nuclear activist to take another look at nuclear...

Bill Conlon writes Knowledge and Thoroughness: Musings on Energy, Technology, Music and Politics . Bill has a degree in Nuclear Engineering and is a licensed Professional Engineer (Mechanical) in California. About 8 months ago, I discovered Bill's blog because it included a post about his mentor...

Nuclear power is often dismissed as "just another way to boil water" as if that is not an industrially important activity. The problem with people who try to turn that statement into a condemnation is that boiling water is historically the most lucrative and important physical process that...

On Earth Day 2009, Jon Wellinghoff, the newly appointed chairman of the U. S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission declared that "baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism." He went on to compare power plants to computers, further exposing the limits of his technical knowledge "People...

Though I have not yet received and read Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History , I have done enough skimming to make me suspect that it is at least partially aimed at my efforts to share information about nuclear power so that knowledge will...

The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blogged about Phil Radford, the 33 year old activist who has taken over the reins at Greenpeace USA . Not suprisingly, Mr. Radford affirmed his opposition to clean coal, asserted that renewables could do the job of supplying all needed electricity ...

David Walters, who blogs at Daily Kos and Left Atomics joined me for a discussion about the benefits that a revived nuclear power industry could bring to the working class and to aid in economic development in states like North and South Carolina. Part of the inspiration for the show was an interview...

As part of my rambling effort to catch up with events and commentary about nuclear power, I found an article about "new" whistleblower accusations of a massive cover up following TMI. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the Steven Wing studies that claim that the health records of people who...

Yesterday, the Vermont Legislature warmly received a non-nuclear energy salesperson and allowed her to continue her traditional tactic of emotionally telling negative stories about the competition. I know, that is a purposely provocative way to describe the event, but that is certainly one way of looking...

I came across an article a publication called Energy Washington Week about small reactors that troubled me a bit. Unfortunately, I cannot link to that article because the source is a subscription only publication. Tthe article gave me the impression that the NRC is not terribly interested in licensing...

An Atomic Show listener who heard the recent show about atomic gas turbines provided a link to an article posted on Energy Pulse titled The Potential for Air-cooled High-Temperature Nuclear Reactors . That article provided me an opportunity to review just why I continue to be intrigued by the use of...

On April 5, 2009, President Obama made a speech in Prague in the Czech Republic about a renewed effort to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and to encourage additional efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons ownership to countries that do not yet have them. The full text of the...

I spoke yesterday to a friend whose daughter has joined the Peace Corps and will be spending the next four years teaching English as a second language to people in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is supportive of her plans, but a bit worried about what her life will be like during that period. Certain insect...

One of the least valid and costly assumptions made by radiation regulators is that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation. In a world where there is, always has been and always will be radiation at various levels due to natural phenomena, that claim just does not pass the sniff test. If you...

Some of the commenters on my recent fusion related posts have been quite defensive and irritated by my skepticism. They claim that there is a lot of value in the experiments that I have not mentioned. They also have told me that my assertions about the sales efforts by the fusion science backers have...

On the Economist web site, I found an article officially titled Greenstanding: Gordon Brown’s New Deal will do little to advance renewable energy . The reason I used the word "officially" is that title is the one that is displayed on the visible page on the web and in print, but the title tagged...

Axil mentioned that Alan Boyle at MSNBC's Cosmic Log had linked to my skeptical blog about fusion hype in his March 31, 2009 post titled Fusion catches fire . So far, there is no commentary posted, though I have no way of knowing whether or not there are others in the moderation queue. I submitted...